The treatment or modification of fabrics to improve their properties is routine practice in the textile industry. For instance, thermosetting organic resins are often used to impart "wash and wear" or "permanent press" characteristics to such fabrics as cotton, cotton polyester blends and other cellulosic blends which naturally wrinkle badly when cleaned or laundered. Various modifying additives or finishing agents such as softeners, stiffeners, lubricants, etc., are also commonly employed with the resin to provide a suitable commercial fabric. These treatments/modifications typically increase the oleophilicity of the fabric, thereby significantly increasing its tendency to accept oily stains and reducing its ability to release such stains after laundering.
The resin treated/modified fabrics can be co-treated with hydrophilic materials to reduce their oleophilicity and facilitate stain release during laundering. These materials, which are referred to as soil release agents, can be hydrophilic colloids such as carboxymethylcellulose, synthetic hydrophilic polymers such as polyacrylic acid, or fluorochemical-based systems. The latter, which may comprise physical mixtures of a fluorinated oil/water repellent and a non-fluorinated hydrophilic derivative or chemical hybrids containing both fluorinated oleophobic and non-fluorinated hydrophilic segments, are particularly advantageous, since they provide oil repellency during normal wear and inhibit "wicking" or diffusion of oily soils into the fabric or fiber bundles, as well as facilitate soil release during laundering.
The prior art fluorinated soil release products typically have one or more of the following disadvantages. They are prepared by multi-step, less-than-quantitative yield procedures which require the isolation and purification of one or more intermediate reaction products, and/or are utilized as solutions in organic solvents which are toxic, flammable and/or expensive or as surfactant stabilized emulsions or dispersions which tend not to be freeze/thaw or shear stable, or which have poor compatibility and stability with textile mill finish baths and/or are not overly wash durable when applied to textile fabrics. The products of the present invention, in contrast, provide mobile, "high" solids content, organic solvent-free, surfactant-free, freeze/thaw-stable, shear- stable, aqueous systems which (a) are compatible with and stable in commercial textile fabric finish formulations, (b) impart enhanced and wash durable soil release properties to fiber containing fabrics and (c) are readily prepared from commercially available raw materials by a simple, high yield process.